Book Excerpt: Exploring IBM SOA Technology & Practice

Learn all about IBM's SOA Entry Points, a simple but effective vendor-neutral approach for discovering and developing services a few at a time.

by Bobby Woolf

Feb 21, 2008

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ervice-oriented architecture (SOA) is rapidly becoming popular as an approach for developing business applications that more effectively produce business value. Organizations adopting SOA often find that the most difficult part is simply getting started. In this excerpt from Exploring IBM SOA Technology & Practice, Bobby Woolf introduces IBM's SOA Entry Points, a simple but effective vendor-neutral approach for discovering and developing services a few at a time. With this process, an organization can get started with SOA easily, and quickly be on its way to SOA success.

Introduction
The IBM SOA Entry Points are five specific approaches for getting started with SOA. They enable an organization to get started discovering and developing services a few at a time. They are distinct and consumable starting points requiring a limited set of products and skills to get started.

Three of the SOA entry points are business-centric, applying directly to the tasks businesses perform to produce value for customers. These business-centric entry points are:

People  Productivity though people collaboration

Process  Business process management for continuous innovation

Information  Delivering information as a service

The remaining two SOA entry points are IT-centric. They are not as immediately recognizable by business people, but they help to integrate and reuse the business-centric SOA services. They are also technology-focused approaches IT can use to get started with SOA. These IT-centric entry points are:

The entry points are distinct but can be used in combination. They are techniques to use to discover what services are needed and to develop those services. They're ways to look at the requirements for applications and business capabilities and figure out what services are needed.